CONCERT REVIEW

Ben Kweller, Pedro the Lion and Death Cab for Cutie
Vic Theatre
Chicago, Ill.
April 16, 2004

Entertainment (Ben Kweller)
Art (Ben Kweller)

Entertainment (Pedro the Lion)
Art (Pedro the Lion)

Entertainment (Death Cab for Cutie)
Art (Death Cab for Cutie)

By LISA MENZEL

"This list thing is B.S. I should be on a list, cause I'm always early," some falsely tow-headed guy complained to photographer, Brian Malcolm, and me as we waited for a photo pass. I didn't so much care, and I didn't realize how much reason I had not to until we ditched the camera altogether and made our way inside.

Dave Bazan, front man of Pedro the Lion, was enjoying standing ovations between every song he crooned. Although, so many were angry as the band started early, as Pedro was quintessential to the evening. That's because Pedro the Lion, regardless of tours and more highly- publicized musical ventures, is not a formulaic parody of what emoting through music is all about. Pedro the Lion is a moral dilemma that has been solved by doing the intrinsically Right Thing. It’s where to go when you want to clean up what happened when you didn't obey your conscience. That and it's chimey and unassuming.

Of course, the issue of Freebird was accosted by a fan, who sounded improbably like the rep who always yells it out across all genres of live entertainment. Bazan handled the situation in a rather paternal manner. "Son, do you know what that song sounds like? You see it's long...and it's slow.... and it sways in the beginning and goes on.... It’s like... It's like..." Bazan crumpled his mouth like a 10-year-old girl's pink canopy bed ruffle and adjusted his guitar as though he would actually play it. No such luck. There was more on the way. Only to dwindle in quality and taste.

Death Cab For Cutie, who I was looking forward to seeing, was simply ravaged by the Vic's notorious sound system. The bass of the stacks, that sound like a protected witness on an unsolved crime documentary, distorted Ben Gibbard’s vocal tone, halfway between Todd Rundgren’s and Andy Gibb’s. Soon followed some tragically mechanical and staged rocking out on the standard Death Cab string pair with the not-so-standard artillery of pedals. At one point, I saw Ben Gibbard launch something off his left shoe, which looked like the navy blue smock my first grade art teacher wore. No prior chain of events as to where it came from, and no clue as to what point it was there to prove.

Then the sweet, emo, non-threatening boy image was shattered for die-hards athwart the lot. Second guitarist, Chris Walla, diffidently straddled the base of his microphone, and completely misinterpreted the meaning of deja vu, as he mentioned something that had never happened to the band that concerned the unusually warm 86-degree weather that evening.

"I'm so glad to be playing in Chicago on a night when it's warm outside and seeing tank-tops.... and.... well.... puppies," he ignorantly sputtered. Wait a minute. This from a band who sings songs about hardship due to negligent parents, being in towns where one is sickened from the unwelcome reception, and ballads about making it although you can't find work? Look, we're soft and bumpy, but we have other purposes. Therefore, I would like women in general to be regarded with a little more self-humility, even if the woman sets no example of decency herself. Tank tops are fine with me. Own a few. Keep it to yourself. This is was an emo show, not a Howard Stern re-run in which an attention-starved woman asks an ugly radio host to play her buttocks like bongos.

The highlight was bassist, Nick Harmer, who looked like a creepy, Nightmare Before Christmas-like mobile doll. Harmer looked as though he were made from jointed Lego blocks as he dropped his face far below his neckline while playing and keeping his gaze on the audience. It had some artistic integrity to it, still some of the original metal. But the face which Ben Gibbard made towards the crowd, was reminiscent of a drunk George Jones during a spot on Hee-Haw, was all plating of an alloy that had no resale value whatsoever. The "connecting with the audience when you're hepped up on your-own hype" look.

Finally when Gibbard harangued that Ben Kweller was going to come out next and make all our little hearts swoon, it seemed more like a threat than an announcement. It was like something one is told after being thrown into the brig to break one's spirits.

And did Kweller ever enter. Ben Kweller stepped onto the stage alone, a product of Greenville that Texas should have kept, waving his hands in piece signs like he was David Cassidy and he knew it. The ridiculous songs ensued, which sounded like verses I made up when I was three and felt the need to profess my love for vanilla ice cream in my parents' green diamond-cut sherbert dishes.

From "karate he learned in Japan" or modified to state pen, a girl he loved who was "as pretty as a flower", and gratuitous scatting, these reparations of sitting and staring at the incredulous piece of work in front of us was due to a bassist who broke his wrist playing wiffle ball, and a band that needed to accompany him at Northern Memorial for support.

I shunt Kweller off on the parent theme heavily in this article, because Kweller looks like an eight-year-old, who's altering the Foo Fighters track, and hopping around his bedroom as though he's doing something watchable. The brainchild comes from a man who was honored to work with Evan Dando, an artist who was intruded upon by Brooke Hunter, (as she professed herself on radio station Q101 years ago), yelling to his publicist, "I don't care what you have to do. Just get me more drugs."

I just hoped that his bassist was getting all the attention he needed, because Kweller was getting all the attention he didn't deserve.

Despite my opinion, scads of couples were nestling their heads together as the William Hung overture went on. It wasn't even that good. Sorry if you wasted your money on the Gemini who promised that at least one of his twins is cool. I, a Libra, famed for generalizations of indecision, am convinced I don't like it, and you shouldn't have to pay for it.

As far as I know, that boy in the humidity-suctioned sweater never got in, and will wait there until he is 58, recounting the injustice to passersby. If only he knew, what he heard of Pedro the Lion outside was the best free show he had never seen.